Broken Love
by ArwenJaneLilyLyra
Summary: I'd always known Harry Potter was a martyr. For all the pain his friendship caused I loved him, my brother. But his sacrifice was no surprise. He left us and despite my love, I hated him for it.
1. Hermione Granger

**Broken Love**

_I'd always known Harry Potter was a martyr. For all the pain his friendship caused I loved him, my brother. But his sacrifice was no surprise. He left us and despite my love, I hated him for it._

_**~ 2nd May, 1998; Hermione Granger ~**_

In a sad way, a sick way, the scream that ripped my throat in two as I saw Harry's body, lifeless in Hagrid's arms, was not one of shock. Pain, certainly, and despair and anger and terror. But not surprise.

I had known he wouldn't see the night through.

Deep in the recesses of my mind, the part I scarcely considered for the agony such thoughts brought attention to, I knew he would end in sacrifice. Perhaps I'd known it for a long time, just hadn't dared confront it.

I'd seen it before, of course.

In my darkest dreams; the dreams that leave traces: damp cheeks and stinging eyes and soulless grief. I'd seen my parents dead, Ron dead, Ginny dead, the Weasleys dead, my old muggle school friends dead.

And Harry.

But seeing Harry dead brought a different pain.

Harry was immortal!

Harry, the immortal friend I read about before I met. The friendship I'd wounded to save him from the murderous Sirius Black in third year; the friendship I'd clung desperately to as it slipped away in fifth year; the friendship I'd resented as it forced me to lose Ron, festering and growing stale in the crummy tent for three, suddenly two.

Immortal Harry. Harry Potter. How dare he!

I hated him in that moment. I hated him more than Voldemort and Bellatrix and every other Death Eater to boot. He'd wasted those lives; so many lives. Fred; Tonks; Remus; Madeye.

Little Colin Creevey, who had never really grown up in our eyes, always the tiny first year with a camera and overlarge robes.

They'd died for him and it was all in vain.

I hated him so much, and if not for my grief I may have gone mad with it there and then.

My best friend gone.

Of the two boys that were my life, Harry was the one to pat my shoulder, _there there Hermione_; the one to say thank you whenever I handed him my class notes; the one with a smile for every yawn of exhaustion I let slip.

Not always, of course, but he was always _there_, manners or no,

His bright green eyes that shed sparkly tears as we held hands and mourned for his parents, hummed a thank you at my floral token of respect.

I wanted to be happy that he was with them at last, free of the orphaned pain that only this year previous was I beginning to understand the gravity of. He would see Sirius.

My grandmother was very religious. She made us pray before every meal, and we couldn't take the Lord's name in vain, and every time I did something well it was all down to _God's given gifts_. She didn't cry at my grandfather's funeral because she would see him again in Heaven.

I tried to be like her. I really did.

But I knew he wouldn't see Lily and James Potter.

Sirius Black wasn't waiting for him on the other side, because there was no other side.

Death was death, and I screamed for my best friend, tormented with agony. His eyes remained closed, his face pale, his body still.

And for all the broken love in my heart, I hated him in that moment.


	2. Ronald Weasley

**Broken Love**

**_~ 2nd May, 1998; Ronald Weasley ~_  
><strong>

It didn't matter that I couldn't think of a single word to say. Not one single word. Because I _couldn't _have said anything. My throat closed and I was gasping for breath, and I wanted to scream but Hermione's screams were already so loud…and I just knew screaming wouldn't help.

I've always been impulsive. My whole life I've just blundered through, hands reaching out blindly and feet stepping anywhere. But for some reason, on that night, I ignored my impulses.

Impulse to scream.

Impulse to curse.

Impulse to cry.

I just put my arms around my girl, my Hermione, and pinned her arms to her sides as she let out enough to pain to fill both our hearts. Maybe she was shaking in my arms, or maybe my arms were shaking her. I can't remember.

I don't think I really saw him. I saw the glasses and that scraggly body. But I didn't see, and I certainly didn't look.

I couldn't.

It was as if the world was imploding as we watched, and suddenly I was…_envious_ of Fred. Our Freddy. He wasn't there to know we'd been defeated, or that our hero had given up, or that our hope had disappeared.

I _envied_ the dead.

And I envied Harry.

All the jealousy that I had kept stored for years, the last remnants of bitterness that the destruction of the locket horcrux hadn't managed to disintegrate, seemed to burn up my insides. Everything was scorching and scalding, worse than the fiendfyre that had killed Crabbe, worse than the metallic finery that had filled the Lestrange's vault in Gringotts.

I thought I was going to die, too.

If it hadn't been for that voice crying my best friend's name, that bushy brown hair and those sparkly brown eyes, I think I would have _wanted_ to.

And when I found my voice it rang out so loud in the silence our enemy had forced upon us.

_He beat you_.

And whether I believed it or not, it was what they needed to hear. And it was only once the rabble began again I realised I had broken that silencing charm.

Growing up with five brothers is supposed to make you tough, particularly if they're all older brothers. But instead it seemed to make me weaker. It wasn't a case of I never cried. I was just too scared to.

But for once I wasn't ashamed of the tears. They'd fallen for Fred and here they were falling for Harry.

Harry.

I remembered meeting him. Thinking how cool, the guy everyone admires. Maybe I can be friends with him. And that pride I felt when he accepted my friendship.

And I remembered how hard I'd had to fight to remind myself why I was his friend, whenever the jealousy I couldn't control got the better of me.

And I remembered hating the way he looked at my sister. I hated him for so many reasons, and it was all gone in a flash of green light that I wasn't even there for.

Amidst the confusion and pain, a realisation caused me to pause for a second. _Less _than a second. Because even when Hermione had sat me down and tried to encourage my empathetic side, telling me repeatedly I had to expand my teaspoon range of emotions, I had never understood certain things.

Like how Harry could hate being so well known and important.

Like how Hermione could be so angry about me finally getting a girlfriend.

Like how whenever Sirius talked about Harry's dad he'd sound all angry instead of, I don't know, _nostalgic_, to use a big, Hermione-like word.

It was because he hadn't been there.

I finally understood that pain. Not so much that Harry was dead, but that I hadn't been there to hold his hand when it happened. And for once my masculinity didn't feel threatened by me thinking such a thing. Just to have been there for him, to show him how much I really cared, how much I loved him.

Why couldn't I have been there?

Because I would have stopped him. And Harry knew it. That's why.


End file.
